About Dr. Julius Marmur

Julius Marmur is remembered today as one of the founding fathers of molecular biology and for his enthusiasm and dedication to education.

He developed the first method to isolate highly purified and high quality DNA. He was involved in the definitive experiments demonstrating the hybridization of DNA strands and the physical characteristics of DNA annealing. His lifelong commitments to DNA structure, yeast genetics and graduate education are celebrated annually by the Marmur Research Awards. Julius Marmur was a member of the Einstein faculty for thirty-three years.

Born in Poland and educated in Canada, Dr. Marmur moved from McGill University in Canada, to Iowa State, followed by short stays at the NIH, Rockefeller University and the Pasteur Institute in Paris. At Harvard, he collaborated with Paul Doty and Carl L. Schildkraut (currently Professor of Cell Biology here at Einstein) to generate technologies to manipulate and study DNA structure and function. The techniques that Marmur developed emerged as some of the most powerful methods for the study of modern microbial genetics. He and his colleagues developed the cesium chloride gradient method to separate small circular DNAs from genomic DNA. He defined the characteristics of DNA strand separation, renaturation and hybridization. After Harvard, he moved to Brandeis and then to Einstein, as a Professor in the Departments of Biochemistry and Genetics. At Einstein, he pioneered the use of yeast as an organism for genetic and biochemical studies.

Julius Marmur had many additional responsibilities, professional, civic and personal. He was an enthusiastic and dedicated teacher, with a deep concern for the welfare and education of his students. He was always available to help students with scientific problems. He would have been particularly pleased to see his name associated with a prize for the most promising young scientists at the Graduate School to which he dedicated so much of his life.